Keep your distance

Penny Pinching Pension Pilfering Plutocrat Pfluffers

Is inflation out of control? No, not even close. Are our creditors closing our accounts? No, because our creditors know that all we need to do to pay them off is raise taxes or get out of this recession. When growth picks back up deficits will shrink. The deficit is not a problemin the first place. The whole thing is just a ruse.

Meanwhile, unemployment remains sky-high and so do corporate profits. Everything is rosy except for the American worker, and to them fiscal conservatives and pundits like Sullivan say “Austerity Now” like some grotesque mimicry of that Seinfeld episode. All the hand-wringing over structural unemployment and so forth is just cover for supply-side nonsense that’s captured the American psyche from pundit and politician on down. What we are witnessing is a balance-sheet recession and a crisis of demand. Or at least that’s what all the evidence and data points to.

But it’s easier for people who do not have to cash an unemployment check or who will never rely on Social Security to say that what we need now is actually entitlement reform, austerity, and – of course – more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Yes, the whole thing is just a ruse. It’s a ruse that happens to (completely coincidentally, i’m sure) line up perfectly with the boilerplate criticisms the GOP makes every time a Democrat becomes President: tax and spend! Unaffordable! Mortgaging our children’s future!

But this time, the GOP was able to turn that boilerplate into electoral gold thanks to the dumb-ass Teatards and the MSM’s fascination with them. The Teatards took their grade-school economic theories and understanding of the Constitution and whipped themselves into a lather over their own imaginary monsters.

But there is no real crisis. There is a temporary balance issue that can be solved very easily, and will be as soon as the recession ends. And everybody knows it except those who are fiscally-paranoid-conservative by nature, and those who just don’t know WTF they’re talking about (ie. the hordes of Teabagger parrots). This is why the official GOP is being cowardly about proposing real cuts, and it’s why Obama is being careful to avoid proposing substantial cuts to anything. They all know it’s a ruse, but it’s one the public has fallen for. And they know that you can never win by telling people they’re dumb, and you can’t win by cutting entitlements. So, they dance.